The world’s most intractable conflict has a problem: it seemingly can’t be solved.
For over 70 years, Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting over the same land.
Other conflicts have come and gone in that time but the Middle East’s greatest rift is as stubborn even.
Israeli academic Dr. Sapir Handelman says he’s identified a reason: “the missing component in almost any peacemaking initiative is the involvement of the people.”
He means ordinary people, not politicians.
For as long as Israel has been a country, the world’s top leaders have attempted to negotiate peace and that, says Dr. Handelman, is the problem.
“The great minds came with ideas and creative solutions.
“The problem is not the ideas. The problem is how to bring them to the political debate and to implement them. Without the people it's not going to work, “ he says.
How do you know?
Dr. Handelman, a peace and conflict teacher, studied the peace processes in South Africa after aparteid, and Northern Ireland after The Troubles.
Wondering what made them comparatively successful, he found a common link: ordinary people were involved.
Everyday Israelis and Palestinians, he concluded, need this opportunity.
“I believe that if there's not going to be peace here, there's no future.
“If there's not going to peace… Israelis and Palestinians are going to destroy each other”, he says.
Butting brains
For ten years, Handelman has run public “negotiating assemblies” in both Israel and the West Bank through an organisation he founded called Minds of Peace.
The idea is that people from both sides come together to negotiate their positions for how the two societies should or shouldn’t live together and then come to agreements.
“Minds of Peace does not promote a specific solution.
“The idea is to create a platform for negotiating solutions,” he says.
If solutions are reached, they’re handed to the two sides’ respective governments to “press the leaders to reach [their own] agreements”.
Criticism
The organisation isn’t the region’s only grassroots peace initiative. There are countless others in myriad shapes and forms and many with questionable backing and motivations.
Minds of Peace has itself been accused of receiving funding from far-right Zionists groups, both at home and abroad.
Dr. Handelman says the allegations are “bullshit.”
“I’m not for sale,” he says.
Palestinian activists have also accused the group of Israeli-Palestinian “normalisation” - the idea being that Israel’s occupation is not a normal state.
Minds of Peace’s Palestinian coordinator, Ibrahim Enbawi, thinks differently.
“God himself negotiated with the devil. So how can you not talk to the Israelis?
“Through negotiation we can get the rights of the Palestinian people, to establish their space, aside from the state of Israel,” he says.
Even Dr. Handelman tempers his expectations.
“Everyone has doubt. I don't see peace.
“But you know, to engage in a peace talk or something like this you have to be a marathon runner; you don't see the results today.”
